


cover up and say goodnight

by peggyolson



Series: naive melody [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anxiety, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Phone Calls, Summer, an ode to eddie in new york, old men trying their best, one (1) balcony, tiny shorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24697504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peggyolson/pseuds/peggyolson
Summary: richie, eddie, and one very hot, very bicoastal summer.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: naive melody [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1785469
Comments: 36
Kudos: 233





	cover up and say goodnight

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK WITH MORE OF WHATEVER THIS IS!!! THE FACT THAT I STILL CARE SO DEEPLY ABOUT THE CLOWN MOVIE IS, TO SAY THE LEAST, UHHHH....... TROUBLING!!!!!
> 
> i wanted to write a sequel pretty much as soon as i finished the first part of this series and i wanted it to focus on eddie, eddie finding himself, and eddie's life in new york specifically since i don't really see that done too often in fic, so that's what i tried to do with this mess. you should be fine if you haven't read the first part, but there are some _~references~_ (lol who do i think i am) that might only make sense if you have, so fair warning! also, i'm still drawing inspiration from [peggy and stan](https://pilotscully.tumblr.com/post/86160242221). these are my passions, etc

Eddie asks him to come to New York on a Monday.

He knows it’s a Monday because Monday is therapy and Monday is also when Eddie is usually busiest at work, in and out of meetings no one wanted to have on Friday, and Richie has finally, finally learned to wait until he gets home to call. Richie also knows it’s a Monday because he’s trying to get better about keeping track of the days, of time passing, because Eddie worries enough about so many things, and Richie doesn’t want to be another source of his constant fretting.

The invitation comes over the phone in that twitchy, roundabout way of Eddie’s — _it’s not like there aren’t, you know, comedy clubs and shit here_ — that makes Richie laugh once he’s decoded what, exactly, he’s trying to say.

“You want me to visit you,” Richie says, a grin splitting across his face. “In New York. Where you live.”

Eddie makes a pained sound. “Not anymore.”

“You want me to _visiiiiiit youuuuu_ ,” Richie sings. “Because you _miiiiiiiiss me_.”

“No, I _don’t_ , I — god, is this fun for you? Are you enjoying yourself?”

“I always enjoy myself,” Richie says, patting the spot on the couch next to him, which Pizza ignores as she goes off to grab her new favorite toy: a stuffed lion Eddie bought her while exploring Santa Monica. ( _They have the same hair_ , he’d observed, making himself laugh.) “Obviously I’ll come visit. When? Tomorrow? No, you’re right, that’s too far. Let me see about flights tonight.”

“Rich,” Eddie says in that way Richie knows means he’s entertained, enjoying the silliness. “Jesus. You don’t have anything you have to be doing?”

“Basically just you.” Eddie boos him loudly enough that Richie has to pull the phone away from his ear. “I have some shows booked this week but they’re mostly like, fifteen minute spots where I’m essentially opening for the comics people actually want to see. I could drop out, nobody would care. ‘Sorry, guys, there’s a super hot dude in New York desperately in need of my attention. You get it.’”

“ _D_ _esperate_? I’ll lock you out of my apartment,” Eddie warns, which makes Richie smile, knowing he means it. “Sleep on the street.”

They come to the agreement (or Eddie says and Richie agrees with what Eddie says, as is his wont) that it would be insane to impulsively rearrange their schedules for the week, which is how Richie ends up booking a flight to New York for the coming Friday, and recruiting Bill and Audra for babysitting duty.

“You want us to watch your dog so you can go to New York and get laid, that’s what you’re telling me,” Bill says dryly, after Richie asks over lunch the next day. “So you and Eddie can both get laid, I’m sorry.”

“Bold of you to think Eddie’ll be putting out this weekend, he’s _so_ mad at me for not bringing the dog.” Richie holds back a grimace. He’s still getting used to this, to talking openly about — and there is truly no other way to phrase it — gay shit, but more importantly, Eddie shit.

They haven’t officially told anyone, no big _hello, this is happening, thought you all should know_ announcement, but Richie is first and foremost an excitable fuck with a big mouth and, in his defense, he hadn’t even realized how much he was talking about Eddie until Bill finally had enough one day and asked, “Did you guys rob a bank together or something, what’s the deal?”

And the deal, well. The deal is a whole lot of things, but in the moment Richie was only able to open and close his mouth a few times — _like a fish_ , his mom used to say — before settling on, “Why? Did he say something?”

“ _You_ said something. You said so much.” Bill rolled his eyes, clearing his throat as he launched into an awful impression of Richie: “Eddie thinks he has a cold but I told him that’s bullshit because Eddie _never_ gets colds. Eddie’s like, a _beacon_ of health, Eddie takes care of himself better than anyone I’ve ever met, and what should I wear when we FaceTime tonight, because Eddie said—” 

“I _have_ _never_ and _will never_ ask you for fashion advice,” Richie interrupted, laughing, embarrassed. He hesitated, and then, off an obliging look from Bill, ended up handing over as many details as he could possibly divulge without barfing everywhere, the long and short of it being: It was new, they were figuring it out, and, most of all, Richie was head over heels, ass backwards crazy in love with Eddie — to which Bill only smiled, nodded, and said, “Cool. I had a feeling,” before promptly moving on, reminding Richie yet again of all the reasons he’d walked into a demon clown’s death lair for the guy twice.

That had been the last time he’d really spoken about him and Eddie — or, more accurately, _himandEddie_ — outside of his therapist’s office, though Bill had brought it up a few times in casual, off-hand ways — a deadpanned _wow, Eddie’s a lucky guy_ after watching Richie inhale a plate of chicken wings, an amused _eat your heart out, Kaspbrak_ while snapping a photo of Richie covered in the large iced coffee he’d accidentally spilled all over himself — which Lisa suggested was Bill’s attempt at making _Richie_ feel okay to talk to him about it: about Eddie, about the new way Eddie now fit into his life. About the thing he’d kept to himself for, well, their entire lives.

“We’ll watch the dog,” Bill says, smirking. “Use protection. Maybe even double wrap your dick, just to be safe.”

“Don’t worry, man, Eddie’s on the pill,” Richie says, leaning back in his chair.

Bill dips his fingers into Richie’s cup and flicks water at his face.

*

The week crawls by in a blur and the steady drumbeat of Richie’s anxiety gets louder as the days drag on. He works, and when he’s not working he writes, and when he’s not working or writing he plays with Pizza and calls Eddie, every aggravated word out of his mouth making Richie understand why the nerves are worth it, why the way his heart seems to seize every time he remembers the feeling of Eddie’s mouth on his is a good thing.

His body, he’s found, has trouble processing positive stuff without spinning it into something much more sinister — which, according to Lisa, probably has a lot to do with his childhood, and, like, great, get in line — so he’s added it to the miles-long mental list of Things He Is Actively Working On, right up at the top near “going outside regularly” and “drinking less; no, really.”

He has someone to want to be better for now, is the thing. Someone who reminds him to do shit like take vitamins and exercise and open the curtains. Someone’s voice in his ear saying _please, please just eat a fucking vegetable_.

It is, Richie’s aware, a lot of responsibility to put on a person who doesn’t even live on the same coast. He ignores the roiling in his stomach as he buys a prepackaged green juice at the airport, sends a photo to Eddie, and laughs out loud when he immediately responds: _A for effort but seriously do you know how much sugar they put in those things?_

*

Eddie had stayed three days longer than he was supposed to.

They’d stood in front of the house like two amateur stalkers until David Byrne’s voice drifted out and then, back at Richie’s, Eddie had followed him upstairs and dutifully helped strip the dog shit-stained sheets, scrubbed the mattress, washed his hands a couple hundred times, and then laced his fingers through Richie’s, pulling him toward the guest room.

It turned out that Eddie grinned a lot when he kissed, the sweet stretch of it pressing against Richie’s mouth like he was trying to make up for forty years of scowling by hiding his smile where no one but Richie would find out about it. He’d been wearing that same smile when Richie asked him to stay longer, the words murmured against his collarbone, slow and sleepy and hopelessly affectionate. He was still wearing it when he rolled his eyes, hands hiking up Richie’s shirt to rub over the expanse of his back, and said, “Not sick of me yet?”

“Nope. Stay forever,” Richie said, which in turn made Eddie huff out a laugh, his nose going a shade pinker.

“Just leave my job and everything, huh?” Eddie said. His hand rested in the middle of Richie’s shoulder blades, working gently at a tense knot of muscle. “All for you?”

“You hate your job, and anyway, it’s got nothin’ to do with me,” Richie said, nuzzling into the warm bend of Eddie’s neck. “That request comes directly from the boss lady.” He nodded to Pizza, snoring softly at their feet.

Eddie stared at him for a moment, his short, blunt nails scratching lightly against Richie’s skin while Richie arched into his touch like a cat, practically purring into it. He’d responded, eventually, “Guess someone’s gotta keep you in line.”

Richie woke up alone in bed and almost managed to convince himself it’d all been a dream when the unmistakable sound of indignant shouting floated upstairs. He followed it like a trail of breadcrumbs until it led him to Eddie, standing in the middle of kitchen with his phone to his ear, arguing with what turned out to be a JetBlue representative. Pizza, happily cradled in the crook of his arm, didn’t seem bothered by his volume in the slightest.

“Obviously I could’ve done it online, but you always get a better deal if you do it over the phone,” he’d said easily, handing Richie a mug of coffee with a thrilled glint in his eye and one corner of his mouth turned up in a devilish little smile. He’d been freshly showered, skin damp and hair loose, wearing another of Richie’s shirts: an oversized _Born in the USA_ -era Springsteen tee with one corner of its hem tucked absently into the waistband of his boxers.

He’d hauled Eddie right back to bed, where they’d stayed for the better part of three days.

They had been, Richie now realizes, some of the happiest of his life.

*

Eddie doesn’t pick him up from the airport, which he understands the moment he gets a look at the chaos that is arrivals at JFK International, but can’t help his palpable disappointment knowing he’s missing out on the chance to bear witness to some primo Kaspbrak-brand road rage. In the back of the Uber, he checks his reflection in his front-face camera — all hooded eyes, mussed hair, wan plane complexion — and messes with his hair for a few hopeless seconds before deeming it a lost cause. Like clockwork, as if Eddie sensed he was thinking bad thoughts about himself, his face flashes across Richie’s screen, interrupting his pity party.

“If you’re calling to say you changed your mind and you want me to turn around, I have some terrible news for you.”

“What?” He can practically _feel_ Eddie’s frown through the phone. “No, idiot, I’m calling to ask if you want to go out for dinner or if you want me to cook something.”

Richie pauses, holding his hand out in front of him, counting his fingers quickly. When that all checks out, he pinches himself.

Eddie clears his throat. “Rich?”

“Yup,” Richie answers. “Did you just offer to _cook_ for me?”

A guttural groan. “Why do you have to make it weird?”

“It’s basically my middle name,” Richie says, apologetic. “Trashmouth ‘Makes It Weird’ Tozier, that’s what it says on my birth certificate. I know I should’ve told you guys sooner, I was just — well, Eds, I was a little embarrassed.”

“Let me know when you’re done with this bit,” Eddie says flatly.

“I can stop whenever.” Richie leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window, watching the slow crawl of traffic go by. He’s close but not close enough, Eddie simultaneously within reach and farther away than ever. Every inch of him, right down to his goddamn fingertips, is pulsing with anticipation. “You wanna cook for me? For real?”

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t,” Eddie says. “I like cooking. I would’ve cooked for you in L.A., you know, it’s just that you—”

“Had no food, yeah.”

“—had no food, exactly.”

Richie smiles, rubbing a hand over his cheek, willing himself to wake up. He should’ve gotten some coffee into him after his flight — the idea of zonking out early on Eddie is borderline unbearable, especially now that he knows he apparently has the power to inspire him to do things like _cook_. “Go ahead and wow me, Chef Eduardo.”

“Well,” Eddie says, an unmistakably embarrassed note in his voice. “Don’t set your expectations too high.”

“Oh, they’re already through the roof of this car, man. My brain has officially been consumed by the thought of you in a little chef’s coat, choppin’ vegetables, flippin’… things in your… pan.”

“Flipping things in my pan,” Eddie echoes. “Sure. What else do chefs do, Rich?”

“I stopped watching _Top Chef_ like eight years ago, I don’t know all the terminology,” Richie says. “What I do know is that this is _definitely_ awakening something in me.”

Eddie hangs up on him but he’s still waiting on the steps out front of his building when the car pulls up twenty minutes later. Richie clocks all the essential Eddie details: polo on, mouth set in a thin line, Sam the Eagle eyebrows furrowed, hands planted firmly on his hips like he’s just _waiting_ for something to piss him off. His heart swells.

“‘Sup, Eds?” he calls, swinging his bag over his shoulder. The humidity face-fucks him the moment he steps out onto the concrete; it’s unseasonably cool for July, but a certain wet mugginess permeates the air anyway, with Richie’s beloved Californian dry heat nowhere to be found. He can already feel the first droplets of sweat beading at the nape of his neck, though that could also be Eddie’s fault. His shirt _is_ pretty tight. “You step in gum? Someone cut you off in traffic? Again?”

Eddie’s eyebrows scrunch even tighter together, which seems like it should be impossible. Richie’s so happy it’s not. “What?”

“You have the pinched expression of someone who’s been extremely inconvenienced,” Richie chirps. “Who should I have ex-communicated? You’re rolling with the big dogs, Eds. I stood in line for coffee behind Jimmy Kimmel last week. I’m pretty important.”

“I don’t have a _pinched expression_ ,” Eddie says. He totally does. “Did you pay for his coffee? That’s what a real big dog would’ve done.”

“Fuck no, he ordered some eight-dollar soy matcha shit. What am I, made of money?”

Richie’s beaming like a maniac as he trudges up the steep concrete steps to Eddie’s building where the man of the hour is waiting for him on the landing, still as a statue, like Richie’s own personal pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

He crowds in close, holding the strap of his bag in both hands to keep from reaching out. Eddie tilts his face up at him, contemplative and concerned and the dearest thing Richie’s ever seen.

“Hi,” Richie says.

“Hi,” Eddie echoes, mouth finally twisting into a pained little smile. “You’re sweaty. Why are you so sweaty?”

“If you think this is sweaty you’re in for a rough weekend,” Richie says. “Pizza sends her condolences, by the way. She had to see a Bill about three whole days away from me.”

“I can’t believe you _left her_ ,” Eddie gripes, prying his bag out of his hands in some misguided, hilarious attempt at chivalry, grumbling about Richie’s dog’s nap schedule all the way inside.

*

Eddie Kaspbrak in New York is a sight to behold.

For starters, his apartment is not what Richie was picturing. It’s spotless, of course, not a goddamn fleck of dust or stray crumb in sight, but that’s probably the only thing that realistically adds up about it. Spotless and small and sunny and cluttered, but not in an artful, bohemian “Please Feature Me In Architectural Digest” way, more like, well— 

“I feel like I’m in an episode of _Hoarders_ ,” Richie says, delighted as his foot brushes up against the third — he’s counting — ottoman.

“I’m not a hoarder,” Eddie lies. “You dick.”

“The eight foot tall stack of _New Yorkers_ over there begs to differ,” Richie says. “You’re like a little ball of chaos. You’re like a Meg Ryan character but in real life.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, frowns, stares, rolls them again. Seems to think about what, exactly, he’s going to say, before the words pour out of him in a frantic jumble: “Myra didn’t like the _New Yorker_ , okay? She thought it was too stuffy, or whatever.” He scratches his forehead with a thumbnail, eyebrows drawn tightly together. “I like the _New Yorker_. They have a lot of good articles and they give you a free bag if you sign up for the year. So I’m keeping those for now, and I’ll recycle them when I decide I’m done with them.” He crosses his arms over his chest, a defiant, youthful spark in his eye, the same one he used to get when Richie dared him he couldn’t climb all the way to the top of the rickety old tree at the end of Ben’s street. “Is that okay with you?”

One of these days, Richie swears, his heart’s going to grow too big for his chest and he’s going to burst wide open like that scene in _Alien_ , but in a good way. And it’s all going to be Eddie’s fault, too, but Richie will totally fucking haunt anyone who tells him so. “Cool with me, buddy boy. Wanna keep this grand tour going or do you want to take a break and caption some cartoons?”

The grand tour isn’t all that grand, really, because Eddie might live in a nice apartment but it’s still Manhattan and in Manhattan one takes what one can get. There’s the lovingly jam-packed living room; there’s the kitchen, where Eddie’s passion for cabinet organization and novelty magnets get to shine; there’s the home office, which is boring and impersonal, or so Richie thinks, until he clocks the framed letter on the wall behind the desk, the _love, Stan_ that caps it all off; there’s the balcony, which Eddie says he never uses; there’s the bedroom, where Eddie doesn’t linger but instructs Richie, firmly, to drop his stuff.

It’s a great place, when all is said and done. Odd and small, maniacally neat in some corners and wholly unhinged in others. Kind of like Eddie.

They stop in the hall after Richie’s carefully inspected every inch of the place, Eddie leaning one shoulder against the wall. He’s backlit by the sun, streaming in through the large windows in the living room, looking like a fuckin’ movie star even as he fidgets with his hands. He cocks his head. “So?”

“It’s great, Eds,” Richie says, quick and honest. He grins, mostly to see if Eddie will grin back, which he does, big and happy and relieved. “Definitely the weirdest bachelor pad I’ve ever seen, and that’s not an insult.”

“I’m not a bachelor,” Eddie says, nose wrinkling in distaste. He shoves in close and raises his eyebrows, like he’s offering up a challenge.

Richie, sucker that he is, feels his heart expand another few inches and lets him win this one.

“You’re right,” Richie says, leaning in until his mouth ghosts along Eddie’s jaw. Rubs his nose along the sharp line of it. Kisses the point of his chin, flicks his tongue out, playful, against the smiling seam of his closed mouth. “You sure ain’t, pal.”

“Told ya,” Eddie says, nonsensical, just to have the last word, and then pulls Richie’s face down until they’re kissing, right there up against the wall. Richie winds an arm around Eddie’s waist while Eddie snakes his own around Richie’s shoulders, opens his mouth wider, dragging each other closer, closer. Melting into it, melting together. It hasn’t gotten old yet, as it happens, the novelty of Eddie’s lips against his own not lost on him, rubbing his thumb over the raised scar on Eddie’s cheek. The feeling of Eddie’s fingers scratching through his hair, lighting a slow-burning flame in his belly. Late afternoon sun seeps through the barrier provided by Richie’s eyelids, warming their faces, their very own spotlight putting them front and center.

So, that’s a whole thing.

Secondly, there’s the matter of the clothes.

“ _What_?” Eddie sighs, followed by an eye roll so masterful Richie just about falls in love all over again.

“Eddie, you’re in _shorts_ ,” Richie says imploringly, begging him to understand how dire the situation is.

“Yeah, it’s July, jackass,” Eddie says, turning back to the stove where he proceeds to dump a bunch of vegetables into the omelets he’s making as if nothing else is happening. One of his feet crosses over the other absently, completely unaware of the fact that Richie’s vitals may or may not be shutting down.

“I’m dead, that’s gotta be it,” Richie says, snapping his fingers like he’s connected some dots. He is physically, mentally, and emotionally incapable of tearing his gaze away from the ripe little curve of Eddie’s ass where it’s being hugged by, if Richie’s eyes aren’t mistaken, if his glasses are doing their job, a _very_ thin layer of fabric, the thinnest layer of fabric known to man, from his legs that seem to go on for miles, which Richie knows can’t be true, because he knows exactly how tall Eddie is. He settles on the sweet, bare, bony peaks of Eddie’s ankles, like some kind of Victorian romance hero, and swallows around the lump in his throat. “I was _murdered_.”

“Right, you were murdered,” Eddie says, not even looking up from the pan. “Yeah, I murdered you and no court will convict me after I explain what I had to deal with. ‘The babbling, Your Honor, it just wouldn’t stop. What choice did I have?’

“I honestly didn’t think there was a way to get me into litigious roleplay but you always manage to surprise me,” Richie says. When Eddie squats down to grab a new roll of paper towels from his meticulously stocked cabinet under the sink, Richie moves his glasses cartoonishly in front of his face a few times, hooting, “ _Awooooooga_! _Humina, humina, humina_!”

“Dude,” Eddie huffs a laugh as he turns to carefully scrape an omelet onto the plate in front of Richie. “Do I have to spray you with a fucking hose? Eat your breakfast.”

Richie does, and while he eats he thinks, privately, that Eddie shouldn’t waste even a moment of his precious time spraying Richie with a hose. It’d be no use, see, because if Eddie had really wanted him to figure out how to wrangle the separate brain he’s sure his dick possesses, he should’ve hosed Richie down, oh, about thirty years ago. He’s a lost cause now in the face of Eddie and his tiny shorts, all Richie has ever wanted since he was prime hose-spraying age.

And maybe that’s why something so intense and burning is building within him, something he can’t help but express, because every time he looks at the bright red of Eddie’s shorts he’s thirteen and gangly and desperately out of his depth, petrified of the enormity of own feelings and just hoping that his best friend will turn his head in Richie’s direction, all over again. He still is all of those things, probably, in a lot of ways.

Except now every time he looks at his best friend, he can usually find him looking right back. Unless he’s fussing with the laces on his shoes or beating egg yolks like they personally wronged him or cleaning out the vacuum, but Richie’s gotten pretty good at waiting.

Thirdly, the whole “intimacy” thing takes some getting used to.

There’s some other world, where Richie isn’t Richie, or at least a better version of Richie, and Eddie’s been body snatched or something, where this wouldn’t be such a big deal. But in the one they’re living in, the real world — well. It’s just that in the millions of ways he’d pictured this happening, in the moments he’d dared to be bold enough to think about it, he had never pictured an adjustment period. _You’ve wanted this for so long, if you ever get it you’ll know what to do_ , was the conclusion he’d come to, the most reliable internal monologue of his whole idiot life. It seemed easy enough, like if he could only attain the unattainable he would suddenly become a person with sure hands and open arms and a mind that was, for the first time, totally at ease. If Eddie ever wanted him back, if he ever got so goddamn lucky, Richie would know what to do. His body and brain would just understand; they’d essentially been training for it his entire life.

That’s not how it works, apparently. Unbeknownst to Richie, problems don’t simply disappear when the love of your life decides to love you back. Self-hatred is a disease, one that sticks itself to your bones and resists any attempt at a cure, but it’s not like Richie wants to think about that every time Eddie presses his face into the space between Richie’s shoulders, arms circling around him from behind. It’s not like Richie wants to choke the moment he has Eddie, naked and gorgeous and golden, all pointed edges and glowing grins, right in front of him. He can’t understand why sometimes reaching out for Eddie is second nature and other times it’s like he’s standing outside of his own body, watching himself shake and shudder away like the worst fucking movie ever made.

“I don’t know how to do this either,” Eddie murmurs later, when they’re lying beside each other and watching the blades of the ceiling fan lazily stir the air. He’d been nice about it, at least. He’d stuck around until Richie’s breathing evened out and then gently pried his hands out of his hair with a murmured _dude, give your hairline a break_ , which had made Richie laugh hard enough for his shoulders to relax.

“You don’t turn into a hot fuckin’ mess every time I touch you, though,” Richie grumbles. He twists the corner of the sheet around a finger, tight, tight, tighter, until the circulation starts to cut off.

“It’s not every time,” Eddie says. He pushes the sheet away and takes Richie’s hand, squeezing gently. It feels good like that, it feels right. “I freak out in my own ways. I yelled at you about granola this morning.”

“The only thing I was even upset about was you implying I’d finish the granola, let alone put granola in my mouth at all,” Richie says, turning his head. The sight of Eddie in profile always makes him wish he could draw. Instead, he reaches out to tap the bridge of his nose, then the tip, then his mouth. Like a feral stray, Eddie tries to bite his finger. “You’re a granola goblin, that’s all. There’s treatment out there, ya know? We can get you help for it.”

“I don’t think it’s outside the fucking realm of possibility to assume that you took a handful and threw it at some birds, that’s all I’m saying,” Eddie says coolly, lifting their joined hands. He gives Richie a pointed look. “And it’d be a pretty big handful.”

Richie waggles his eyebrows absurdly. “Well, well, _well_. Does your mother know how you talk to boys, Eddie?”

Eddie barks out a laugh, untangling their fingers so he can flick Richie in the cheek. “Come on, you know you’re not alone here, right? You get that?” And Richie has to look away, back toward the fan, so he can give the question the thought it deserves. If Eddie asks him something, he should get an honest answer.

“I think sometimes I don’t,” Richie says, and snaps his mouth shut before he says more, because he remembers this fight from a few weeks ago, their first real blow-out since this all started— 

(“You don’t fucking think of me as a real person,” Eddie had accused, voice crackling over the receiver, furious and exasperated all at once.

Richie had snapped back, “What does that even mean? What the hell do I think you are, then?”

“You act like I have it all together because that’s what you want to believe,” Eddie said, “that I’m perfect, or _what_ ever, so you can be a mess on your own.”

“So you’re mad that I’m complimenting you,” Richie had said, his hand trembling as he tried to keep the phone held against his ear.

“I’m frustrated because that’s not how it works,” Eddie exploded. “None of this works if one of us is compared to the other. Do you get that? It’s not a competition. We have to be fucking… equal in this. Or nothing. Or it’s just — or it’ll be nothing.”

“Oh,” Richie replied. He opened his mouth again, finding he had nothing to add.

“Guess what, asshole? I’m a mess, too,” Eddie said. “And there’s room here for the both of us.”)

—but Eddie understands him, obviously. Eddie always understands him.

“Well, get it through your head,” Eddie says, the concerned little line between his furrowed brows begging to be smoothed away, which Richie does with a swipe of his thumb. “I’m serious.”

“I know you are,” Richie says. He can’t stop looking at Eddie for the fucking life of him. “You’re amazing.”

Eddie snorts, pushing Richie’s face away, but keeps his hand there. Uses a finger to trace the crow’s feet at the corners of Richie’s eyes. “See? I’m not used to that yet. All you did when we were kids was make fun of me and now you say stuff like — that. Constantly.”

“Hey, I love making fun of you, that’s here to stay. Also, I was pulling your pigtails back then, moron,” Richie says. “I had a big embarrassing crush on you and I would’ve lit myself on fire to get your attention.” He shrugs, palm falling to rest on the bare, warm jut of Eddie’s hip. This kind of touching he can do, the kind that feels slow, easy. Low stakes. It’s basically second nature, with Eddie.

“You really did, that one time,” Eddie says. He’s blushing a little, Richie can see it under his freckles.

“That was Mike’s fault,” Richie insists, for probably the eight-hundredth time in his life. 

“Mike still says it was your fault,” Eddie says, yawning right in Richie’s face as he makes himself comfortable against his side. Richie sinks a hand into his hair and feels distinctly, unmistakably, stunningly alive. “And I’m gonna continue to side with him.”

“One of these days I need to find some new friends,” Richie says, releasing a puff of laughter against the crown of Eddie’s head, pulling him closer, ignoring the thump in his chest.

Fourthly, this is Eddie’s city, very much so. More than Richie had ever been able to comprehend before seeing him in it. It hadn’t added up in his mind before, how the fuck Eddie, _his_ Eddie, would fit in this endless, busy, germ-infested wasteland of a city, but as usual, he found that he should never underestimate just how spectacularly Eddie can prove him wrong.

He takes Richie out that Saturday, guiding him around his neighborhood, pointing at storefronts and providing stern observations on which places have the best coffee, the best bagels, the kind of wine he likes. He flings his arm out to stop Richie from crossing the street, smirking when he narrowly avoids getting mowed over by a bike. He waves at a lady smoking a cigarette outside of a dry cleaning place and laughs good-naturedly when she accuses him of never coming to see her anymore. He holds Richie’s hand and leads him to the subway, rolling his eyes fondly and gently elbowing him out of the way when Richie can’t figure out the proper speed at which to swipe his MetroCard. He grins when Richie, cockily not holding on to anything, stumbles as the train lurches to a stop.

This is where Eddie has made a life for himself, Richie realizes, watching the way he casually pulls a little bottle of hand sanitizer from his pocket as they get off at their destination. He’d moved here and fallen into a loveless sham of a marriage, sure, but he found something even better out of all the bullshit: a place he understands, a place that understands him right back. A place he fits in, after getting the shit kicked out of him, literally and figuratively, by Derry.

They all had, sure; that fucking town had left behind the kind of scars Richie knows will never heal, but Eddie might’ve had the worst of it. Eddie, a sweet, trusting kid who’d lost one parent too young and been left with another who convinced him the world was scary and bad, that there was not just something, but _everything_ wrong with him. Eddie, who got so furiously, electrically angry sometimes in what Richie now recognizes as a method of self-preservation. Eddie, who’d been keeping the same secret as Richie, who’d been just as afraid of himself and had let that fear carry him into a long-term relationship that never, in any version of this universe, could have sustained itself for good, at least not without turning Eddie into a complete shell of a person.

 _But here he fucking is,_ Richie thinks fiercely, eyes trained on Eddie as he gives his name to the hostess at the restaurant he’d been raving about for the past week, one hand wrapped around Richie’s wrist like he’s afraid of him getting lost. _Here he is, assholes. He literally walked out of hell and lived to tell the tale, nothing can touch him now, not unless he says so_.

“Ten minute wait,” Eddie says, nudging Richie a few steps back toward the bench near the door. “Would’ve been less if we wanted to eat outside, but I can already see your pit stains.”

“As long as you want,” Richie blurts, and only hears himself after the words have already come out.

Eddie’s brows knit, amused. “What I _want_ is dumplings. And a ton of noodles. We’re getting at least one vegetable, too, understand me? Your body’s gonna start shutting down.”

Richie smiles, helpless. He can feel his heart, hyper-aware of how quickly it’s beating. “You take care of me the way I take care of Pizza, huh?”

“I would definitely compare you to a dog,” Eddie says around a laugh, reaching out to ruffle Richie’s hair. “I think she eats better than you, though.”

“Oh, I know she does,” Richie says, pushing into his touch, “and _she_ knows when I buy her the cheap shit instead of the fucking gourmet dog food she insists on. Demanding little girl I got.” It occurs to him all at once that they’re in public, right out in the open, where an entire crowded restaurant could turn their eyes on them at any moment. The alarms sound off and fade away as quickly as they began, because — no, fuck it, he doesn’t do that anymore. He is really goddamn trying not to do that anymore. His therapist has been encouraging him not to do that anymore.

Eddie meets his eyes, and Richie watches something flicker across his face, like he’s reading Richie’s mind. His hand falls away and Richie thinks that’s the end of the moment, until Eddie grabs him by the back of the neck to haul him in for a kiss. It’s hard and fast, as if he’d been dared to do it, and when he pulls away Richie can only think, _He is the bravest motherfucker alive_. He grins at Eddie and Eddie grins right back, and Richie aches, feeling dazed and loved.

Later, while Eddie’s in the shower, he opens the doors to the balcony that look out over the block. There’s a bar across the street with people pouring in and out, a bodega on the corner that two giggling girls emerge from, huddled closely together. People sit out on their stoops, playing music and chatting. Cars drive by; couples walk dogs and idly push strollers. It’s an almost chilly night, the breeze moving the air and breaking up some of the humidity, making it marginally easier to breathe than it had been earlier. Richie’s still taking it all in when two hands settle on his waist, when a lithe body fits against him from behind. Eddie smells fresh and sweet from his shampoo, a little musky from where he’s already started to sweat; when he breathes it’s a light tickle against Richie’s nape. Richie leans back into his chest, idle and content.

“Why’re you out here?” Eddie asks, muffled from where his lips are pressed against Richie’s shoulder. He can feel the familiar warmth of them through the material of his shirt — the one that proudly brandishes the Beastie Boys logo on the front and reads _get off my dick_ on the back. Eddie had thrown out some pretty good zingers while mocking it earlier: _What is this, freshman year at any liberal arts college in 1995?_

“Wanted some air and they don’t let you freaks have backyards in this city,” Richie says, rubbing his palms over Eddie’s arms. “I can’t believe you don’t hang out here more.”

Eddie’s shoulders lift in a short shrug. “It’s so loud.”

Richie snorts. “ _You’re_ loud. And you live in New York goddamn City.”

Eddie huffs a little. “I don’t know, what do you want me to say? It’s not like Myra and I were having dinner out here every night or anything. She _hated_ the noise and she always said — I mean, the air, it could — with my allergies and stuff—” He cuts himself off, like he tends to when he doesn’t like how whatever he’s saying is coming out, when he wants to start over.

“Say it,” Richie says, voice quiet. “Hey. Eds.”

“I just got used to not using it because the person I lived with didn’t use it,” Eddie says, finishing weakly. He tips his forehead to rest between Richie’s shoulder blades. If he’s embarrassed by this, Richie will eat glass. “I let it, I don’t know, influence me. It’s not a great reason, but it’s the one I got.”

“It makes sense, man,” Richie says. He thinks better of it and turns around in Eddie’s arms, resting his weight on the railing so he can tug the whole jittering mess of him closer. “Listen. You don’t have to explain shit to me, ‘kay? But, I mean, just so this is out there, I really like it when you do.”

Eddie meets his gaze, mouth opening a few times to form soundless shapes. “Okay,” he finally says, flustered. This close, Richie can see all his freckles, the ones that have always multiplied across his face in the summer. Even the combination of fading with age and Eddie’s militant sunscreen application — which he’d forced on Richie to minimal success, eventually groaning _just fucking let me do it_ as he snatched the bottle of SPF back and rubbed a handful of cream into Richie’s skin — couldn’t fully mask them. There are much less now than the freckles he’d dreamed of when they were kids, but seeing as how the ever-present one near Eddie’s hairline can bring Richie to his knees, he doesn’t think quantity matters very much. 

“I like it out here,” Richie says mildly.

“I’m glad you could lower your standards from your precious backyard, California boy,” Eddie says with a hesitant little smirk, disentangling their limbs so he can look out over the street himself. The breeze passes through his hair, pushes his loose t-shirt against his chest, and despite all his talk, he seems so at home against the backdrop of the city. Maybe Eddie hadn’t found himself in New York when he’d moved here all those years ago but he’s working on finding himself now, now that he’s given himself permission to do so. And, anyway, he’d clearly seen something he liked in his time here: It’s difficult, these days, to get Eddie to do things he doesn’t want to. So he’s finding himself, and showing Richie what he digs up, letting him in on the secret, bit by bit. Because Eddie trusts Richie with it. Because Eddie trusts Richie, period.

Richie inhales, stooping down to burrow against Eddie’s neck. He feigns some exaggerated snoring noises until Eddie smiles and tries pushing him away, but not hard enough.

“You think you’re fuckin’ joking but that’s what you actually sound like when you sleep,” Eddie says through his laughter, still putting up a half-hearted struggle as Richie secures his arms tighter around him. “That’s what I willingly sleep next to. A goddamn gorilla.”

Richie lifts his head to bellow, right out into the night, “ _Hear that, New York?_ This hot little piece just admitted he sleeps next to me!”

Someone below them wolf whistles which sets Eddie over the edge, his laughter reaching what can only be classified as hollering levels as he collapses against Richie’s chest, gasping for breath, face and neck beet red, saying, “Richie — _Richie_! You fucking _idiot_ , I can’t fucking stand you!”

*

Eddie drives him to the airport on Sunday night, absolutely incensed over the idea of going to JFK and bypassing all of Richie’s offers to take a cab. It turns out Eddie drives like an absolute madman, like someone with a death wish, like he’d learned how to handle a car from watching the _Fast and Furious_ movies. One of Richie’s hands clutches the handle above the passenger door while the other remains clamped over his mouth so Eddie won’t see him silently giggling every time he shoots off yet another creative string of insults at a fellow driver.

“I’ll pull your tongue out through your fucking taint, don’t try me, assclown,” Eddie mutters darkly, narrowing his eyes at another car that drifts too close for his liking. He speeds ahead, definitely breaking a bunch traffic laws, to get away from it. Every time Richie looks at him he sees stars in his eyes, or big cartoon hearts, or both.

How stupid does a person have to be to leave this behind? That phrase, the one people always say, _you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone_? He’s never found that to be true — at least not with Eddie, anyway. Richie’s always known what he had, always had a problem letting go, and that’s never been truer than it is right now. He wants to go back to Eddie’s apartment in all of its overstuffed glory, he wants to pull Eddie back into bed, he wants to watch Eddie cook for him and bring him out onto the balcony while the sun’s still out and listen to him gripe about Richie getting melanoma. He wants Eddie to make fun of him for complaining about having to walk everywhere, wants to embarrass him by affecting a French accent when he orders in a restaurant just to see that furious blush and that twinkle of excitement in his eye. He wants to be with Eddie always because he loves him, and because he’s wasted enough fucking time already.

But that’s just not realistic, or so he’s been told. So Eddie tells him, in so many words, while they linger outside of his car in front of Richie’s terminal.

“It won’t be too long,” Eddie assures him, and Richie knows he’s right, but that doesn’t really help. He fixes his gaze on the sharp points of Eddie’s shoulders, tilts his head like Pizza when she’s trying to figure out why Richie’s not petting her enough. “Whatcha doin’?”

Richie shrugs. “Trying to memorize every part of you for when my right hand is riding solo later.”

“Want me to just whip out my dick right here, would that be easier for you?” Eddie says dryly, mouth twitching as he fruitlessly tries to hide his smile.

Richie holds a hand to his heart. “You’d get arrested for public indecency, Spaghedster? For me?”

“I’d like to see ‘em catch me,” Eddie says, nodding to the enormous, imposing SUV behind them, the one he looks hilarious stepping out of.

“I honestly don’t like their odds,” Richie says, and when Eddie tips forward to kiss him he can barely move his mouth with how hard he’s grinning. By now Richie knows the tilt of his head, the feel of his breath against his cheek, the way he likes it when his bottom lip is bitten — all so familiar, all things he’ll fantasize about tonight. “Jesus,” Richie breathes as he pulls back, sighing into the small space between them. “Ah, Jesus. I love you.”

“Richie,” is all Eddie can say, eyes widening minutely, a small movement. He hadn’t said it back yet, not directly— 

_Are you okay with me saying that to you all the time?_ Richie had asked last night, a whispered question against Eddie’s collarbone where his face had been mashed up. _Are you okay with me_ not _saying it all the time?_ Eddie asked back, fingertips skating down Richie’s spine. _You should only say it if you want to,_ had been Richie’s response, to which Eddie said, quickly, _I do. But I can’t — I don’t know — I might not be—_ and Richie waited quietly, feeling the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed through the irritation, collecting his thoughts. _I want you to say it. I like when you say it. I feel it, I just — I need you to be patient with me. For right now. Okay?_ And Richie had laughed, a shaky sound. _Eds_ , he’d murmured, _of course. Always._

—but Richie knows how he feels, is more than secure about it. Besides, he likes the way the tips of Eddie’s ears heat every time the words come tumbling out of Richie’s mouth. It’s like beautiful clockwork, a perfect inevitability.

“You should go,” Eddie finally says, hands splayed wide over Richie’s chest, eyes soft. “You’re barely gonna have any time to pretend you ‘didn’t know’ you have to take your shoes off at security.”

“One of these days someone’s gonna get the joke,” Richie says, making no move to step back. They stare at each other for a long moment before both dissolving into quiet, inexplicable laughter that lasts until Eddie physically pushes him away with a hurried _go, get out of here! Get out of my city!_ Richie blows him like seven kisses and Eddie throws up his middle finger and looks back three times before he gets in his car.

It isn’t until after he’s landed that he sees Eddie’s text, sent deliberately while Richie was mid-flight, thoroughly innocuous among the rest of his unread messages.

 _Love you too shithead_. 

*

Richie’s visit, it turns out, is something of a boiling over point for them. It’s like something activated when he left, a force or a current drawing them even closer together despite the whole-ass country keeping them apart. Without skipping a beat, the calls start coming at all hours of the day at a sincerely outrageous volume: calls before and after Richie does a set, calls he answers during meetings with his manager, calls first thing in the morning and calls right before going to bed, FaceTimes from Eddie’s office where he — looking like a sexy businessman gay porn fantasy with his cute little suits, his neat hair, that clipped, professional tone — keeps Richie on mute while he’s stuck in phone conferences, mostly so he has a commiserator to roll his eyes at, letting Richie know when he’s dealing with yet another idiot. Eddie deals with a lot of idiots.

Once, Richie answered in the middle of lunch with Bill, which earned him an appalled look and some extremely funny sputtering. He’d been forced to stuff a finger in his ear just to hear Eddie over Bill’s groans of _are you kidding me, you talked to him an hour ago_ and _you’ve been texting under the table all afternoon_.

“Billiam says hi,” Richie said, to which Bill replied, “That’s not even close to what I said.” A pause, and then, “But yeah, hi, Eddie.”

“Hi, Bill,” Eddie said. “Do you remember that thing you ordered the night we went out? When you were here? The thing I liked.”

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Richie had replied, poking disinterestedly at a piece of chicken.

“I don’t know, it was salty, it had shrimp, it was fucking delicious.”

“You’re giving me nothing here, pal,” Richie said. “Hold on, I’ll pull up the menu.” Then Bill had muttered a disbelieving _oh my god_ and actually gotten up from the table when they started going through each item, one by one, only to come to the conclusion that the dish Eddie was thinking of hadn’t even been at the dim sum place they’d gone out to, but at the Italian restaurant they’d ordered lunch from the next day. And if Bill drawled, “I’m now understanding what it would’ve been like if you guys had gotten together in high school,” after Richie hung up and found him posted up at the bar — well. He didn’t have to think about the implications of that just yet.

The point is, they talk a lot, and Richie had been pretty positive they were already talking a lot, and then they’d seen each other naked, and then they’d spent a languid weekend together, and now Richie is sure he might actually start to decay if he doesn’t talk to Eddie at least once an hour. Bill’s right: He does feel sixteen again, consumed by Eddie and unreasonably dizzy with it, distracted, borderline breathless, an entire summer lost to thoughts of Eddie’s eyes and his legs and his hips and the affection in his voice when he says _shut the fuck up, Richie_. It’s not like this is anything new, the only new part is that he now knows what it’s like to swallow those words with an eagerly reciprocated kiss, what Eddie’s narrow waist feels like under his hands.

He is a fucking wild animal. He is untethered and unhinged and out of his cage. He misses Eddie with such ferocity that sometimes he surprises himself with how much he’s still capable to feel for this person. It’s not an optimal way to start a relationship, all things considered.

“Everyone I work with is fucking incompetent,” Eddie sighs into the phone by way of greeting, catching Richie in the middle of a writing session which had mostly just involved playing “pretend to throw the toy” with Pizza, which she fell for every time. Classic.

“Tell me everything, it’s so hot when you’re mad at someone who’s not me,” Richie says, all indulgence.

Eddie’s breath leaves him in an aggrieved huff, saying, “I’m never actually mad at you,” and before Richie has the chance to recover from that Eddie’s segueing into a rushed, irate monologue about a coworker who’d fucked up his presentation that quickly morphs into a rant about the people above him who couldn’t seem to wrap their minds around all he got done in a day despite the fact that Eddie had been at the company for six years, about the demands — and subsequent lack of fulfillment — that come along with all the bullshit.

He’s unhappy in his job, Richie’s known it for a while, and the gag is that Richie still doesn’t fully understand what Eddie _does_. Sometimes he calls him up to ask things like, “Can you analyze the risk of me eating this entire bag of family-sized jalapeño chips in one sitting?” And Eddie will hum thoughtfully for a few minutes, eventually coming back with, “In my professional opinion, there’s a very high risk of severe heartburn.” He forgets Eddie has a boss to report to, clients who count on him, a fatass paycheck that requires him to sit in the glass office he’s expressed his hatred for on at least twelve separate occasions.

It bums him the fuck out, and he tells Eddie as much.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Eddie insists. “I just complain to you because, you know.” He trails off and Richie hears what sounds like a bird chirping, his mind offering up the very soothing image of Eddie out on his balcony, where he’s been spending more time lately. At Richie’s request, he sends photos every time he does something particularly reckless like dangle his legs through the metal bars or take his coffee out there in the morning rather than hunched over his kitchen counter.

Richie pats his thigh until Pizza begrudges him by curling up in his lap. He stares out the window in the office, the one that looks out over the backyard, and frowns. “You could quit, y’know.”

“You say that a lot,” Eddie says, thoughtful, almost suspicious. “What’s your endgame here, man?”

“I’m _trying_ to become the sugar daddy you deserve if you’d just fucking let me,” which earns Richie some scoffing and a few muttered assurances that he would be _the worst fucking sugar daddy ever_. “No, I’m just — you hate it so much, you should go do something you don’t hate.”

He can hear the beginnings of a protest from Eddie’s end before he stops himself with a grunt. “I don’t even know what that would be.” He quiets, and when he speaks again it’s self-admonishing, frustrated, “When I was younger I thought this job would be a good idea. And, I mean, it is — it was. It was a smart decision, I could _do it_ , it seemed like — an adult’s job, y’know? I have all these memories of my dad leaving for work in his suit, and I’d watch him go and think, like, ‘That’s how a grown-up is supposed to look.’” Eddie quiets, and then: “God, you know what? I don’t even remember what he did anymore. I don’t remember what my dad’s job was now.” He laughs, bitter. “But I — I guess I’ve always been trying to… follow that. Follow his lead. That sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t,” Richie says immediately, quick to squash that thought before it grows into something monstrous. “Not at all.”

He hadn’t known Eddie’s dad. The guy died a year before Eddie, Richie, and Bill all crashed into each other like rogue pinballs in the first grade — sick, that’s what Eddie had told him once, cancer or something like it. A disease that had ripped through his body until he became the weakened husk of a man who used to lift Eddie on his shoulders and read him stories before bed and point out his favorite fish at the aquarium. It had shattered Sonia, who’d once allegedly been a normal human being, though Richie had never been sure how much he believed that. The rest was history, so to speak.

And Eddie, well. Eddie had just been a lonely kid with a crazy mom and a dead dad and memories of a guy who’d left the house every morning in a nice suit. Eddie had just needed friends.

Richie’s throat suddenly goes dry.

“I don’t know what I’d want to do,” Eddie says, annoyed, like it’s a personal failing on his part. “I never had a back-up plan. Sometimes I don’t even know what kind of fucking cereal I like, let alone what I’d want to do with the rest of my life.”

“World’s your oyster, Eds,” Richie manages, chest swelling with affection. This ridiculous fucking person. This ridiculous, sprawling mess of a person. “You like Froot Loops. I remember that — Jabba would never buy them so you’d come over before school and my mom would have a bowl waiting for you. I — yeah, I remember.”

Eddie laughs, sounding surprised and overcome. “Fuck, you’re right. I did really like Froot Loops, huh? God, so much sugar.”

Richie, warmed, thinks of the way Eddie scrunches his nose in distaste, the way it makes his dimples pop out. “Have a Loop. Live a little, bud.”

Eddie pauses for a short, quiet moment. And then, simply: “I _am_ living.”

Richie smiles. “Yeah, you are.”

*

Before this, before now, Richie hadn’t been a “real” comedian since his twenties. “Real” not in the sense that he was funny or talented, but in the sense that he was grinding the way his peers were: every night spent running between as many shitty local clubs as he could get to, desperately trying to get the booker to put him in a good spot, hoping to god he had enough pull to knock someone else down the list. It had been exhausting and exhilarating and Richie had given it all up in an instant when he was discovered by a talent scout who happened to be sitting in the audience at one of those shitty local clubs.

It sort of feels like he’s experiencing it all over again. People know his name now, yeah, especially after that stunt back in June, the one that had made headlines for about a day and a half before the Kardashians and Kardashian-adjacents reclaimed their god-given spots as Most Interesting Media Personalities. (About fifteen thousand interview requests had rolled in after, and Richie had agreed to only one: an appearance on a podcast hosted by two young gay comedians who’d laughed in pure incredulity the moment Richie walked into the studio. He’d been practicing discussing it freely on stage ever since, gradually learning to feel at home saying the words and fielding the reactions, good and bad. His therapist has been calling it progress. Richie doesn’t quite know what he’s going to call it yet.) Point is, it’s almost too easy for him to get a spot now, but he’s not the kind of asshole who would take away some wide-eyed twenty-something’s moment just so he can do his fifteen minutes and be in bed before midnight. 

The moral of the story is that Richie’s been getting home late a lot, collapsing on his mattress at obscure hours and forcing himself awake in the late morning so he won’t sleep all day. It can only sustain itself for so long, he’s aware: This is a young man’s game, plus Pizza has been decidedly _not_ into the new schedule. But as he’d explained to her yesterday, “Daddy’s gotta get famous again and make money so he can convince Uncle Spaghetti to quit his rank-ass job and come live here with us. Maybe. I haven’t really run it by him yet.”

That’s how he finds out about the phone, thanks to the dog’s unhappy growling. Richie, dead to the world, would’ve missed it entirely had she not been so offended by the persistent blaring, and when he cracks an eye open he sees her trying to gnaw at the stupid brick where it sits on the nightstand, the ringer faintly going off.

“Chill out, Cujo, come here,” he mumbles, tugging her back with one hand and grabbing for the phone with the other. 1:13 AM, the clock says. “Eds?” he murmurs, mouth full of marbles as he pushes Pizza’s snout away from where she’s trying to bite at his ear. “P’s mad at you for waking her up. Huge wrench in your evil plot to steal her away from me.”

“Rich,” Eddie hisses. He’s breathing hard, like he’d just gotten back from one of his midnight jogs, which are unfortunately real. “I have a fucking mouse.”

Richie yawns, the bones in his shoulders cracking when he tries to stretch out. “Like as a pet?”

“ _A p_ — no! No, why would I be calling you if—” He groans, like the most put-upon little prince in the world. “Richie, I saw a mouse! In my fucking apartment! Uninvited, which I assumed went without saying!”

“I thought you took care of the mice thing,” Richie says, eyes falling shut again. He could probably pass out like this, with Eddie yelling in his ear. It’s like a white noise machine, or a warm blanket. “Like a month ago. I told you to put down traps. What _is it_ with New York and rodents?”

“I _did_ , and I think it’s caught in one,” Eddie says, panicked. “I’m gonna lift up the couch and it’s gonna be fucking squirming and — I can’t do it, it’s so fucking disgusting, Rich—”

Richie bites on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from grinning outright. “I gotcha. Whaddya want me to do about it, Eds?”

Eddie makes an affronted noise. “Come over and handle it.”

“Cool,” Richie says. “Be there in six hours.”

“This blows,” Eddie says.

“Yeah,” Richie says, lying down with the phone cradled between his shoulder and ear. “You gonna be okay? Should I call an ambulance? Just flex one of your arms at the thing, that’ll scare it.”

“What does that even mean,” Eddie moans.

“It means you’re jacked,” Richie says, yawning. “And it means that I’m tired. Get into bed and close your door, it’ll probably be dead by the morning.”

Eddie actually, literally gags. “I don’t want to touch a dead fucking mouse, Rich.”

“I guess you do need me to come and handle this, eh? For you, my friend, I’ll take one for the team. I would walk five-hundred miles, etcetera. So to speak — I don’t really like walking that much.”

“I miss you,” Eddie says, irritated. He breathes out, heavy. “This is harder than I thought it’d be and I really miss you. You annoy the shit out of me every time I see you and then you go away and I miss you again. How does that work?”

Richie’s breath stutters, caught somewhere in his chest, which suddenly feels like an anvil has been placed on it. Yeah, sure, like _Eddie’s_ afraid of some rodent. Get real. “That’s probably the whole love thing talkin’.”

“Terrible,” Eddie mutters. Something rustles in the background, and Richie recognizes it as the sound of him getting into bed, moving the sheets around to his liking. He hears the whir of Eddie’s air conditioner. He hears a car horn, though he can’t be sure if that’s from his end or Eddie’s.

“More terrible than the mouse?” Richie tries.

Eddie’s quiet for a second, thinking over his options. “Only a little less.”

“I’ll take it,” Richie says, letting his eyes fall shut. His free hand clenches into a fist at the base of his neck, near his collarbones. “Want me to tell you about my set tonight? That should bore you right to sleep.”

“Please,” Eddie says, and so Richie does.

*

The summer inches by as the temperature climbs higher and higher, slowing time. He lounges around in boxers and nothing else and starts limiting himself to one or three drinks a day — he _entirely_ blames Eddie for the fact that he now notices things like the dehydrating effects of alcohol, for the record. Lunch with Bill often switches to dinner, when the heat drops to something livable and the short walk from his car to the restaurant doesn’t feel like walking through the goddamn Sahara. When he calls Mike in Florida, he complains briefly about the weather and receives nothing but a long, mocking peal of laughter.

“You fucking grew up in Maine, too,” Richie whines.

“No one feels bad for you,” Mike says.

It’s in the soupy, sloggy middle of August that he floats out the idea of doing a show or two in New York to his manager, who emails him a few hours later with a list of theaters she thought would want to host him. _Wherever it is, I don’t care about capacity, let’s do it_ , he writes back, and after three days of Richie jerking violently at every new email notification and almost snitching on himself to Eddie a bunch of times, she comes back with three dates at the end of the month. Smaller theaters than he ever would’ve imagined possible two years ago, but what did any of that matter now?

“Whatcha doin’ at the end of August?” Richie says, using the key he’d finagled out of Bill to let himself in through the backyard. The bastard has a _pool_ and he’s been holding out on Richie all summer.

“Why am I getting some serious deja vu right now?” Eddie asks, a little distracted as he types away at his computer. “Nothing, I don’t think, why? You doing more shows?”

“Uh huh,” Richie says, crouching down to skim a palm over the water. He pushes his glasses up his nose, wipes moisture away from the corners of his eyes. “But in New York this time. Two days, three shows.”

“You didn’t—” Eddie laughs, high in his throat. “This isn’t—”

“Oh, this is purely happening for selfish reasons,” Richie says, grinning. A socked foot nudges at his shoulder: Audra, bringing him a beer, which he accepts with a grateful tip of the bottle in her direction. As she turns to go back inside she calls a casual _tell Eddie I said hey_ over her shoulder. “Make no mistake. I mean, yes, hopefully people still want to see me tell jokes and I make money from this, but even if I don’t—”

“Your right hand gets a break,” Eddie supplies dryly.

“Bingo. Won’t someone think of my poor right hand? My poor, raw right hand?” Behind him, a sigh, and then Bill drops down to sit on the ledge, feet dipping in the pool. “Dad agrees.”

“Bill doesn’t care about your broken wrist or your over-jerked dick,” Eddie says. “Stay with me.”

“Yeah?” Richie asks, low and private. He slides a finger through the condensation on the bottle, pulse quickening.

He can hear the playful smile in Eddie’s voice when he replies, “Yeah. You fuckin’ better.”

Richie releases a breath, pleased. “Why pay for a hotel when I got all the amenities I need at Chez Kaspbrak? Room service, maid service—”

“ _Maid_?”

“You use that Swiffer like a weapon.”

“I’m not your fucking maid.”

“You did my _laundry_ the last time I was there.”

“I — you asked me to throw a few things in with mine, so — _fuck you_!”

“That’d be dope, what time works best? I’m free at six.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bill says, pushing himself off the ledge and into the water.

Richie takes a long sip of beer. His entire back is wet, soaking through his shirt, and he can’t even completely blame it on the sun. “Might stay a few days longer, too. If that’s cool with you.”

“Stay as long as you want,” Eddie says, genuine. 

“Okay,” Riche agrees, feeling drunk already, torn down the middle. He catches Bill’s expectant eye and says, “Gotta go save Big Man from drowning in his own pool.”

“Wear sunscreen,” Eddie orders, right before he hangs up. “Both of you. I’m serious.”

“Eddie says he’ll fly here and kill you if you don’t protect us both from the sun,” is how Richie interprets the message once he surfaces from the water, pushing his wild tangle of hair back. Without his glasses, everything looks distorted and strange and too bright, like a fucking J.J. Abrams movie in his eyeballs. “And if I get burnt I _will_ be blaming it on you.”

“You think I want to be on Eddie’s bad side?” asks the blur to his left that sounds a lot like Bill. “No way. Scarier than my mother when something pisses him off.”

“And something’s _always_ pissing him off,” Richie says, knowing exactly how it comes out. Taken. Besotted. Kept.

They float in companionable peace for a while, Richie _hm_ ing in response when Bill speaks vaguely about the scripts he’s working his way through right now, staying near the edge so he can grab blindly for his beer every so often. After a while Audra joins them, purposely splashing Richie in the face with a huge sheet of water and laughing her ass off when he accuses her of _attacking_ him in such a _defenseless state_. He likes this, the sound of their idle chatter nearby, the water around them. He listens to their quiet, playful bickering, hears Bill laugh when Audra shoots back something that must be an inside joke, and feels the throb of an old, distant hole in his chest.

“Back to New York soon, huh?” Bill asks later, when they’re lounging on the back porch, the sky above them painted in swaths of blue, orange, purple. Richie, who’s busy poking at his reddened shoulders, looks to him, stretched out in his deck chair, Audra snoozing at his side.

“I have a few shows there,” Richie says carefully. He’s been talking about this in therapy, too ( _I know how I feel, everyone knows how I fucking feel, I don’t know why this is so hard, still_ , he’d said last week, to which Lisa had replied, _it’s pretty ingrained in you, feeling ashamed of anything that concerns your sexuality, Richie_ , and Richie had come back with an emphatic, _but I’m not ashamed of Eddie_ ).

Bill looks out toward the pool for a short beat, then back at Richie. “You know I’m happy for you guys, right? I told Eddie, but I just want to make sure _you_ understand that.” He tries for a half-smile, a shrug of one shoulder. “I give you a lot of shit, but it’s just because that’s what we’ve always done. Doesn’t mean I don’t get what a big deal this is.”

Richie laughs, a quick bark. A little panicked, at least to his own ears. Probably to Bill’s, too — the guy knew him pretty fucking well. “I’m still… figuring out how to talk about this, is all. I was under the impression I was hiding it pretty well until, like, a month ago.” He pauses, waiting for Bill’s mirthful laugh or knowing look, but it doesn’t come. At a loss, he goes on, hasty, “It’s not anything you’re doing wrong, is what I mean.”

Bill nods, face open. Looking, as he so often does in moments like these, like his younger self. “Well, you can tell me if there’s something I should be doing. Something better.”

Richie smiles, leaning his head back against the cushion behind him. “Campaigning hard for that Ally of the Year award, huh? I’d vote for you.”

“Alright,” Bill says, rolling his eyes.

“I feel so supported,” Richie says. “You’re like a one man GLAAD.”

“I said _alright_ ,” Bill repeats, flapping his hand in Richie’s general direction.

“If you really want to be a better straight ally, I have a list of things that would make me, personally, feel more secure,” Richie continues, ticking off on his fingers, “One, drive me everywhere. Two, answer all my emails. Three, do my laundry—”

“Oh, come on, I couldn’t take away Eddie’s job,” Bill quips, shoulders moving in uncontained laughter. Audra stirs and swats at his arm, smiling with her eyes closed.

“I’m totally narcing on you for that,” Richie says, grinning. “First you don’t make me wear sunscreen, now this — how do you plan to offend the gay community next, Bill?”

“Like this: leave my house,” Bill says, looking about five seconds away from losing his shit.

In the end, Richie takes responsibility for the sunburn when Eddie notices over FaceTime later. It’s the least he can do, he figures.

*

At Eddie’s behest, he brings Pizza to New York with him this time. She’s not a great traveler, her little face looking about as irritable as Eddie does when he misses a new episode of one of his home improvement shows, and in the car she even turns away from Richie entirely, pretending she doesn’t hear his amused calls of her name. It’s not until she and Eddie are reunited that her tongue falls joyfully from her mouth, yapping excitedly as she squirms in his arms. It’s where she stays for the better part of her first day on the East Coast, bogarting Eddie’s attention for the whole evening.

“Can’t believe I have to wait ‘til my fuckin’ dog’s asleep just to get made out with,” Richie murmurs when they’re in bed that night, Pizza zonked out in the living room.

“You’re such a baby,” Eddie says, muffled where his mouth is pressed against Richie’s jaw. When his teeth scrape against the skin, it goes right to Richie’s dick. “Never learned to share.”

Richie nuzzles his nose against Eddie’s ear. “Why would I wanna share you?”

Eddie’s skin feels hot under his fingertips, hotter than the whole goddamn city, so hot he’s probably giving it a complex. It’s how they spend the rest of the night, and fuck it if Richie has two shows tomorrow: the sight of Eddie, sated and nodding off against Richie’s shoulder at three A.M., mumbling things like _I’m glad you’re here, Rich_ and _missed you, fuck, I missed you_ , might be the only thing he ever thinks about again, anyway.

In the morning, he follows the scent of food to the kitchen until he finds Eddie — wearing, Jesus, a whole new pair of barely-there shorts, this time adorned with a tropical pattern Richie can’t help but take credit for — flipping pancakes in the kitchen, phone propped up against a carton of soy milk, Bev’s face filling up the screen. At his feet, P sits calmly for the first time in her life, tail wagging.

“No,” Eddie’s saying, “I mean, I think Richie’s a way more lenient dog owner than you guys are, y’know?”

“You’re going to have to be the one to teach her stuff, then, Eds,” Bev says, a laugh in her voice. “It’s, like, time-consuming but not too hard, I can send you everything Ben and I read.”

“You guys talkin’ shit?” Richie says, grinning. He murmurs a quiet good morning to Eddie, ghosting a hand over the small of his back as he passes by to get to the fridge. Drinking right from the carton of orange juice, he stoops down into frame, wiggling his eyebrows at Bev. “And good morning to _you_ , what’s poppin’? How’re you, how’s Handsome?”

“Can you use a fucking glass, please?” Eddie says, pushing one at him.

Richie pulls a face. “Why? We’re already trading spit like it’s our job, what’s it matter?”

“It matters because you drool more than your dog does,” Eddie says. From the floor, Pizza’s ears perk up.

“Are you _trying_ to give her a complex?”

“I’d let her near my orange juice before I let you near it.”

“Hey, guys,” Bev pipes up, propping her head up in her hand. She’s smirking in that way she used to when she caught Richie holding Eddie in headlock for just a moment too long. “Eddie’s right, you should use a glass.”

“You _would_ side with him,” Richie says, narrowing his eyes as he swivels his head between both of them.

Bev hums, and when Richie takes his next sip — from the glass, thank you very much — he cranes his neck to follow Eddie’s movements as he goes to grab something from one of the high cabinets above the microwave. She lets out a mockingly scandalized gasp and says, “Oh no, Richie, did you burn yourself on a curling iron?”

“What—” He cuts himself off when he catches sight of her devilish look, and he realizes his mistake. The stretched-out collar of his faded _Trashmouth on Tour: 2013_ t-shirt, the way it reveals just enough of his neck to see the darkened, mouth-shaped bruise at the base of his throat. He laughs as Eddie turns around slowly, pupils blown wide, looking like he’s about to drop the blender he’s holding. “I did, that’s exactly right. You know me, man, I’m spending hours trying to figure out that perfect just outta bed look.”

A burst of laughter has Bev throwing her head back, and the cornered deer look on Eddie’s face fades a little. He sidles up to Richie, says, “Thought you said those curls were au naturale.”

“I didn’t mean the ones on my head,” Richie says, gesturing a wide width around his crotch.

“I’m done with both of you,” Bev says. “Later, boys. Make us proud out there tonight, Rich. I’ll send you some makeup tips for covering up that burn.”

Richie’s laughing so hard he can barely manage to flip her his middle finger and sneak in a _later, nerd_ before she disappears. All of the Losers are funnier than him; he’ll never understand why he’s the one who “made it” as a comedian.

Eddie throws him a sidelong glance and Richie finally get a good look at him, all rumpled hair and stubble and easy morning smiles. He looks criminally beautiful like this, cooking, grinning, and boyishly delighted with himself, the button-up Richie had been wearing the day before casually thrown on over his shorts because Richie had told him months ago he likes seeing Eddie in his clothes. There’s a smudge of purplish blue underneath his bottom lip that Richie would very much like to lick off. It’s exactly how Eddie should look all the time, he thinks. If an asteroid were to collide with Earth right at that moment, scattering them all into bits and pieces and atoms and matter, hoo boy — he’d have no regrets. Not even one.

“You got a little,” Richie says, tapping the corner of his own mouth. “Blueberries?”

“Shit,” Eddie says, and before he can reach up to wipe at it with his thumb, Richie stops him and leans in. Seals his mouth over Eddie’s bottom lip, sucks gently. Sinks his teeth in, laves his tongue over the sweet remnant from the fruit. Eddie moans, unhurried and appreciative, one hand curling into the fabric of Richie’s shirt. He’ll do this all day, Richie thinks, if it keeps Eddie this content.

“Gotta finish cooking,” Eddie says, but it comes out more like _hrmph-hm-huh-mmf-humf_ while they’re still wrapped up in their kiss.

“Let it burn,” Richie suggests, hands slipping down to Eddie’s tailbone.

“And listen to you bitch about how hungry you are for the rest of the morning? Not a chance,” Eddie says with an amused huff, gently pushing Richie a few steps back. Dazed, Richie looks down at P, who meets his eyes and growls questioningly: _Can we stay here forever?_ he imagines her asking. _Also, feed me right now._

They brave the oppressive heat to eat out on Eddie’s balcony while P stands guard nearby, watching the pigeons with rapt, curious attention. Since he last visited, Eddie’s set up two chairs and a little table for out here, and when they’re finished with their pancakes he stacks their plates neatly on top of each other and inches his chair closer so he can rest his feet in Richie’s lap. Richie takes one in his hand, runs his knuckles over the vulnerable arch, cups his heel protectively. Eddie watches him with a bemused smile, folds an arm behind his head, fully relaxed. Some muscle Richie would never be able to identify flexes appealingly with the movement, and he can see where a small puddle of sweat has accumulated in his armpit, darkening the material on Richie’s shirt. It awakens something fucking primal within him, something lazy and interested that unspools in his belly.

“That hickey seriously is out of control, dude,” Eddie says, gesturing vaguely at Richie’s neck. “I went a little crazy. Sorry.”

“Eds, if you ever apologize for giving me a hickey again I’ll throw myself off this balcony,” Richie warns. Perspiration rolls down his temples, pools in the bent crooks of his arms, but he won’t move until Eddie tells him to. He’d slathered him in enough SPF, after all.

“I mean, it’s only like ten feet, you’d probably live.”

“It’s super sexy,” Richie promises, squeezing Eddie’s foot. _It means I’m yours_ , he thinks, too chickenshit to say out loud.

Eddie looks at him for a long, searching moment before he seems to convince himself of something and holds up the universal _one second_ finger, grabbing their dirty dishes before heading back inside. He definitely takes longer than a second and Richie misses the absent weight of his legs resting over his thigh almost immediately. He looks to P, who’s much too absorbed with tracking the birds’ every twitch to spare him any sympathy.

When Eddie rejoins them he’s armed with two fresh mugs of coffee, one that he hands to Richie, and a book shoved under his arm. He perches on his chair but sits ramrod straight, rubbing a hand over his cheek, looking for all the life of him like he has something to say. Instead he shoves the book at Richie, hands twisting anxiously — _Fundamentals of Nursing_ , the cover informs him, and then:

“I was looking into nursing school, at first just kind of casually, because I didn’t think — I mean, I thought it was something you’d have to start doing, like, way young, but I was researching it and there are tons of people who get into it when they’re older,” he explains, words falling out of him in a hurried jumble. His anxiety often translates into what could seem like coke-addled babbling to anyone with an untrained ear. Richie, of course, speaks fluent Eddie. “You can — you can pretty much do it at any age. There’s a program at NYU that’ll only take me four years to get through, if I, you know, do everything right.” He has that determined, confident look on his face, the same one that used to precede him jumping into the quarry first, or swiping one of Richie's comics right out of his hands. The unstoppable Eddie Kaspbrak, who, once he put his mind to something, could do just about whatever the fuck he wanted. “I applied to it.”

Richie beams, grabbing for Eddie’s wrist. “Eds, Jesus _shit_ — why the fuck didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I wanted to make up my own mind about it first,” Eddie says, and Richie notices his dark eyes flickering over Richie’s expression, checking him for any sign of doubt, which he wouldn’t be able to find no matter how hard he searched. Because _holy shit_ , this guy. This brilliant little bitch. “You’ve been telling me for months I could figure it out, and I wanted to be sure it was what I wanted before I told you. I — yeah, it’s what I want. I think I could be good at it, Rich.”

“You’re gonna be a fucking rock star at it,” Richie says, adding in the British guy’s voice, “ _Doctor K_.”

“That’s Nurse K to you, asshole,” Eddie corrects, a radiant smile finally lighting his face up, brighter than even the very clear sky above them.

Richie is so giddy, so overjoyed, he has to set the book aside so he can throw his arms gleefully into the air. “Analyze these nuts, dumbshits, my boyfriend’s gonna be a fuckin’ _nurse_ ,” he crows, reaching out yank Eddie into his lap, who looks like he’s struggling not to be overtaken by his own laughter. It’s too humid for this, for their bodies to trap this much heat, for their breath to mingle damply between them, and there they are anyway. It is ninety-nine full degrees, and Richie might drown in ball sweat, but if Eddie wants to stay like this for the next forty-eight hours Richie would fake a broken leg to get out of his shows. Anything for Eddie.

His Eddie, who’s going to be a nurse. Who’s going to spend the rest of his life caring for people, because that’s what he’s always been best at. Richie should know.

“I’m so proud of you,” Richie says, ducking his head against the damp _V_ of skin exposed by the buttons undone at Eddie’s collar. He tugs Eddie in until their stomachs are flush, spreads his hands over his thighs. “God, this rules so hard.”

“It’s not definite yet,” Eddie says, nails scratching gently over Richie’s rough cheek. “I still have to get accepted.”

“I’m proud of you either way,” Richie says, mouthing kisses to whatever skin he could get at. “I’m proud of you no matter what.”

“Thanks, Rich,” Eddie murmurs, and presses a finger to the jumping muscle in Richie’s jaw. His chest lifts once in a surprised breath when Richie licks a hot stripe over his pulse, then settles against him. Richie barely registers the heat anymore; all he knows is Eddie. “I — that’s — yeah. Thank you. Jesus. Fuck.” Eddie turns Richie’s face up so he can kiss him, fervent and possessive. “Thank you. You have no idea.”

They lose an entire day like that, out there on Eddie’s balcony — moving languidly and unhurriedly against each other, unashamed and unafraid — except it doesn’t really feel like Richie’s lost much of anything.

*

The shows go off without a hitch, somehow. In New York, with Eddie, Richie is a different version of himself, a looser, more comfortable Trashmouth who basks in the energy the audience is giving back to him rather than trying to go through the tried and true motions like usual. He feels at home on stage. He feels, to be really fucking dramatic about it, reborn.

Eddie waits for him backstage every night, having stubbornly ignored all of Richie’s insistent reminders that he didn’t actually have to come. He chats amiably with the opener and Richie’s manager and the stage manager, shaking every hand he encounters. He lets Richie sweep him into a big, sweaty bear hug the moment he steps into the wings, and waits patiently off to the side when nervous fans approach Richie, iPhones at the ready, as they’re on their way out.

After the last show, Eddie takes him to one of those deeply old-school New York hot dog joints that appear in basically every movie he’s ever seen, the kind of place where you have to pay in cash and fight a pair of drunk grad students for a spot at the counter. Richie does his best Al Pacino through the whole meal and snaps a photo of Eddie, brow glistening, hair coming undone over his forehead, staring out the window, and another of him shielding his face when he spots Richie's camera. They walk the whole twenty blocks back to Eddie’s, Richie’s arm slung proudly over his shoulders, singing pure nonsense into the night.

In the elevator, Eddie crowds him against the wall with two arms near his shoulders bracketing him in, head tilted up, eyes boring into Richie’s own. He looks so fucking mischievous, like pure trouble, the kind of trouble Richie wants desperately.

They don’t go immediately to the bedroom, taking some time to greet Pizza — who gets bored of them and goes back to dozing on the couch right away — and then migrate to the kitchen, where Eddie pours them each a glass of whiskey, which they sip in near-silence in the dim light pouring in from the street lamps outside the windows. It’s like a game, almost, one that Richie only kinda understands the rules of, happy in his own powerlessness. After a while, he laughs, lurching forward to curl into Eddie, hunching down to be level with him. 

“Hi,” Richie says on a breathless whisper. “How we doin’?”

“Excellent,” Eddie replies. His fingers fit between the buttons of Richie’s shirt, rubbing the hair on his chest. “ _You_ were excellent tonight.”

“I like when you come to my shows,” Richie mumbles, feeling dreamy and woozy. The heat, the alcohol, the adrenaline finally wearing off — it leaves him feeling long-limbed and boneless, like Gumby. Like he could collapse against Eddie and never move again. “Makes ‘em better, I think. Makes me better.”

Eddie laughs a little, disbelievingly. “I think you’re just good at your job, man. I didn’t even do anything.”

“You do more than you know,” Richie says, or means to, because then Eddie’s kissing him and he can’t really be held accountable for his actions beyond that. They grind leisurely against each other until they’re both panting, mouths sliding together, slick and warm. Eddie lifts his hands to either side of Richie’s face and stands on his toes, and Richie, feverish, frenzied, hoists one of his legs over his hip, which makes Eddie moan deep in his throat. Richie forgets about the overwhelming panic that has historically sent him stumbling away from Eddie, away from this, a quivering, humiliated lump. It doesn’t come. Fucking — shit, it doesn’t come. Holy shit.

“Holy shit,” he gasps wetly against Eddie’s throat, lips moving over his Adam’s apple.

“Yeah,” Eddie agrees nonsensically, fingers tightening in the soaked strands of Richie’s hair, claiming him. Richie is so, so happy to be claimed. “Yeah.”

*

When he’s thrown blearily back into consciousness, the air conditioning is working overtime, the moisture that’d been dripping from his every body part earlier long dried. He blinks hard into the darkness and smiles when he finds Pizza, passed out and snuffling adorably, in the spot Eddie had apparently abandoned god only knows how long ago. “Be back, baby girl,” he whispers into her fur, pushing aside the sheet he’d been draped with and padding out of the room, shoving his glasses on his face. They don’t help much in the dark, but he still knows when to step aside to avoid any of the tightly packed pieces of furniture or the carefully collected decor, as if operating on instinct in Eddie’s space.

The balcony doors are open, curtains fluttering in the light breeze, and there’s Eddie standing at the railing, wearing a loose pair of boxers and not much else. Richie grabs the throw blanket draped over the back of the couch and wraps it around himself as he steps out, announcing his presence with a yawn.

“Are you naked?” Eddie asks as Richie approaches him, leaning his head against his shoulder.

“Mhm,” Richie responds, eyes slipping closed again. It isn’t exactly comfortable, slouching so far down like this, straining his neck, but he doesn’t dare mention it to Eddie.

The block is mostly dark, remarkably, nothing but the sound of some indiscernible music from the bar below and the occasional passerby, but it all sounds so distant from up here, like they really did carve out their own universe.

“Time is it?”

“Threeish,” Eddie says. His hand slides under Richie’s blanket to rest on his back, just above his ass. “Maybe closer to fourish.”

“Come back to bed,” Richie says, swallowing around the dryness in his throat.

“Few minutes,” Eddie promises, and gathers Richie into his arms so he can herd him over to one of the chairs. He claims his rightful spot in Richie’s lap, covering them both with the blanket, heat be damned.

“Tryna watch the sunrise, Eds?” Richie slurs, using his last bit of strength to stroke a palm down Eddie’s back.

“Didn’t mean to, but when else do I get to do this?” Eddie asks, voice pitched low and rumbly. “You can go back to sleep.”

“I’m not even tired,” Richie manages through another huge yawn that he tries to stifle against his shoulder, which makes them both laugh. He turns his head for a kiss, which Eddie grants him: a slow, clumsy press of lips.

“Sleep,” Eddie insists, and reaches up to remove Richie’s glasses. “I’ll wake you up when it’s daytime. I got you.”

“You got me,” Richie repeats on a mumble. He closes his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> [@suzybishops](https://suzybishops.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!
> 
> also, black lives matter, black trans lives matter, and if you're reading this and have the means, donate to [trans justice funding project](https://connect.clickandpledge.com/w/Form/fcd63e3f-e625-4589-a7b7-ac6c92ce3406). xoxo!


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